A delectable entertainment. [14 Mar 1983]

If the format of a lecture is inherently limiting, the directors do a superb job of weaving a compelling visual — and emotional — experience.

Like the infectious and haunting needle drops, from Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” to local hits of the time, “The Secret Agent” is the best kind of personal film, imbued with so many things that Mendonça Filho loves, both resurrection and elegy.

It’s a pressure cooker and a wonderful showcase for three talented actors.

As in any Sorkin joint there are at least three lines of dialogue that might make your eyes roll into the back of your head and your body produce an involuntary groan so extended that you will likely have to rewind. But it just goes to show how good the rest of it is that a few clunkers could stick out that much.

Black Bag follows a run of agilely directed thrillers by Soderbergh made with screenwriter David Koepp. They are both at the height of their almost-too-easy powers; the script, especially, is peppered with delectable dialogue.

There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake.

Conclave is sure to ruffle some Catholic feathers — provocation is in its DNA. But for the rest of us, this juicy, smartly crafted thriller, is simply a great watch.

Payne, working with a sharp script written by David Hemingston, keeps The Holdovers grounded and real. Even absent your own memories of smoking indoors or handsewn outerwear, this is the kind of thoughtful, precisely constructed movie where you can almost taste the cigarette smoke and feel your fingers numbing through drafty wool mittens.

If you do give in, you’re in for a treat — a heart-pounding, never dragging, mission accomplished that takes audiences from the frozen Bering Sea to the rooftop of Abu Dhabi International Airport and the narrow alleyways of Venice.

The cast is marvelously filled out with John Heard as Ludie and Carlin Glynn as Jessie Mae. As an ensemble, it is as fine a cast as one could want. [6 Jan 1986]

Thompson is truly better than ever and brings to life a complex and evolving person with humor, grace and a sharp edge. McCormack, meanwhile, is a star in the making. And together, the two are magnetic in this wonderfully adult film that is funny, sad, awkward, empowering and illuminating.

It’s pretty amazing just how compelling this is for being so simple, but it allows the viewer to really get wrapped up in the minutiae of it all: The performance, the landscape, the minor triumphs and major setbacks.

Seeing Hamburger Hill is like watching the 6 o'clock news almost two decades ago. Part of this reality is due to the special effects, which were coordinated by Joe Lombardi. The napalm sears the screen; the tracers rip right through it. [14 Oct 1987]

Dave is a movie packed with many, many magical moments. They seem childlike in their simplicity, just as spontaneous ... and just as charming. [06 May 1993]

Heder, who adapted her screenplay from the 2014 French film La Famille Belier, makes crucially effective decisions throughout, but none more important than the casting, with three extraordinary deaf actors playing the deaf family members.

Brooklyn is a story for anyone who has ever left home. It’s a story for those who’ve waffled in indecision, for those forming their identities and forging their own paths. It’s a story awash in muted pastel nostalgia about family and love and ambition and heritage and goodbyes. And it’s one of the loveliest films to grace cinemas this year.

Perhaps there’s something in this tale of two women — or really, three — that speaks to all who try to pretend that it’s unnatural to sometimes be ambivalent about motherhood. And that motherhood is not, in ways and at times, a struggle for nearly everyone.

Kids deserve movies that are made on the biggest possible canvas. “How to Train Your Dragon” is one that’s worth the trip to the theater. It might just spark some young imaginations, whether it’s to go back and read the books or dream up their own worlds.

This fabulous, moody film isn’t your typical jock flick where bitter rivals compete to a crowning, sweaty end. There isn’t a real victor in Borg Vs. McEnroe and the points don’t prove anything. It’s less a tennis movie than a meditation on the personal costs of chasing excellence.

It’s Tassone’s perspective that Finley largely keeps to, which — if you don’t know the true story — lets Bad Education unspool if not surprisingly at least captivatingly.

This is not a movie that will leave you feeling especially warm and fuzzy – it is often devastating. But it’s also bursting with hope for the future in this deeply human story of how one woman decided to devote her life to ensuring that her son’s would be brighter.

It’s a worthy story even without the coda of the fight for their civil rights. You never know where empowerment might stem from: Sometimes, it’s a hippie camp in the Catskills.

Central to the effectiveness of the film is the performance of Sally Field as Betty. She is magnificent. No star is more proficient at portraying the American woman beset by woes not of her own making. In her unadorned face are reflected the compassion, the sense of betrayal, the suffering, the maternal love and the gumption to escape her bondage. [07 Jan 1991]

Based on Caitlin Moran’s semibiographical novel, How to Build A Girl is a wickedly funny, sweet and vibrantly told coming-of-age story that feels like a teen classic in the making.

How these two 20-somethings actually hook up is the subject of this sweet, down-to-earth, funny and thoughtful rom-com that shows two strangers moving though London and visibly falling in love over a matter of hours.

[Petzold] turns “Miroirs,” a slender and sweet 86-minute puzzle, into one of the more lovely and profound little movies about how hearts can be mended by just opening a door.

Written and directed by Stella Meghie, the film is a gentle and attentive inter-generational tale with a first-rate cast.

The insanely winning Booksmart boasts too many breakthroughs to count. There are the two leads, Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, both of whom we’ve seen before but not like this. There is the director, Olivia Wilde, whose debut behind the camera is remarkably assured. And then there is the teen comedy genre, itself, which Booksmart has blown wide open.

There’s nothing terribly interesting about the way it’s told, it’s just a straightforward underdog story with a big beating heart.

Time and again, Song, who both writes and directs here, makes the unflashy, understated choice — and in so doing, darned near breaks our hearts, with a tale that feels universal yet rich in detail, urgent yet unrushed.

Though not for everyone, it’s a film that can justifiably be described as “epic” in ambition and design. And, wouldn’t you know, ambition and design are precisely what the movie’s about.

Lessin and Pildes do a masterful job of putting the Janes in historical context, seeing how their desire to offer safe abortions grew out of the revolutionary ’60s and yet how women’s issues were often deemed secondary to male-led efforts.

It’s an Errol Morris film, right down to the Philip Glass score. And while the Interrotron and the reenactments might not be the revolutionary storytelling devices they once were, they’re almost comforting at this point and no less effective at creating a mood and an emotional experience around a sharp conversation.

It may not be nuanced, but it taps into something mythical — ferocious monsters rising from nowhere to be battled by 21st century swordfighters. And it’s exhilarating.

Turn Every Page...is one of the finest films you’ll see about the craft of editing — not that there are so many of those.

Thrilling because it puts the future in the hands of the young. “Arco” dares to imagine a fate for them, somewhere over the rainbow.

A high-voltage joy ride of journalistic fun. [16 March 1994]

It’s a triumph of small-budget, naturalistic filmmaking, where cars on a gravel road kick up choking clouds of dust and arm bones crack when pressure is applied.

A disturbingly vivid new film by Neil Jordan for George Harrison's Handmade Films. It is distinguished by a riveting performance by Bob Hoskins, who was named best male performer at the recent Cannes Film Festival. He is certain to receive Academy consideration early next year.

Gosling’s task here is not merely to give dimension to a mythical American hero. He also has to play a man who famously kept his emotions in check. That may not be an asset for a movie character, but sure was an asset for the first human to set foot on another world.

Nyoni and her cinematographer David Gallego make this a transportive, stylish and unforgettable experience that powerfully transcends the specifics of its setting, while also taking audiences into an culture that’s likely unfamiliar.

For as naturalistic and real as The Hate U Give is, it goes off the rails just a little bit at the climax to make its grand point about the effect of this kind of climate on innocents, but there is too much heart here to really nitpick at a little hyperbole.

Absorbing, brash, exhausting, urgent, sometimes brilliant and sometimes unapologetically messy

In this little microcosm you see not only a portrait of some serious-minded youths, but how their world views, morals and political beliefs have been molded by what’s happening in the country. And it manages to be both hopeful and bleak about our political present and future.

Challengers is a drama, but a funny and self-aware one. It doesn’t take itself very seriously and has a lot of fun with its characters, all three of which are anti-heroes in a way.

In his first major film without partner John Belushi, Aykroyd proves a film comedian of first rank. [9 May 1983]

A quick-witted and lively debut.

At the end, one feels gratitude not only for Stigter’s painstaking work, but to author Kurtz and of course his grandfather, just a man with a camera whose fleeting footage is a powerful response to those who intended to eradicate the existence of these people and millions like them.

Pitt, in particular, appears so utterly self-possessed. It’s a swaggering grade-A movie star performance in a movie that celebrates all that movie stars can accomplish — which, for Tarantino, is anything.

The Power of the Dog may in the end be more a twisty psychological thriller than a transcendent frontier epic. But the film’s shape-shifting transformation is also part of its ruthless finesse.

A Hero, in which Farhadi returns to his native Iran after a trip to Spain for 2018′s Everybody Knows, is one of the most labyrinthine moral tales you’re likely to encounter.

In some ways “The Dig” feels like its own artifact too, like a lost Anthony Minghella film made 30 years ago and buried until now.

Asteroid City, with its sprawling cast, beautiful hues, mumbled jokes, box-within-a-box setup, references that only the 80+ crowd may truly get and retro-cool soundtrack, actually makes you feel things even if it can’t quite make sense of itself.

Some may find the film too loosely plotted, a series of vignettes more than a single, tight narrative. But they only need to sit back, listen to the beautiful score by Alberto Iglesias, and let Almodovar weave it all together _ from the first meditative shot of Banderas to the satisfying surprise of the ending shot _ as only Almodovar can.

A Star Is Born, is simply terrific — a big-scale cinematic delight that will have the masses singing, swooning and sobbing along with it.

Forty years ago, The Crucible was a cautionary tale cloaked in thumpingly good entertainment. It remains that now, and Miller and Hytner deliver the material with the ferocity it deserves.

It’s a grand culmination of both Miyazaki’s extraordinary body of work and of a film that gathers, like a flock, or a symphony, so many of his trademark obsessions.

Of all the post-apocalyptic landscapes we’ve been treated to over the years, none is as beautiful nor peaceful as that of “Flow.”

Hard Truths runs just 97 minutes, but it’s the kind of film and character that will stay with you long after — especially and most importantly when you find yourself having a Pansy kind of day.

It is a powerful and artistic interpretation of an academic book that was anything but an obvious candidate for a narrative feature.

It’s Pawlikowski second-straight masterwork, only one with a critical if seldom-seen error. His movie is too short.

El Cid is a glorious reminder of the kind of epic filmmaking that no longer exists. No battle scene has surpassed the thrilling sweep of the siege of Valencia. Even Cecil B. De Mille in his prime could not match the opulence of the costumes and sets. [30 Aug 1993]

The situation might have seemed merely a script writer's contrivance except that Howard Franklin ("The Name of the Rose") has fashioned a plot that is both convincing and affecting. Director Ridley Scott happily keeps the human situation in the foreground while exercising his remarkable visual talent. [5 Nov 1987]

Collective is not a walk in the park. But it’s admirably awake to the cause-and-effect tragedies that can follow seemingly slight or obscure governmental decisions.

The little blue alien who can sprint quicker than the speed of light has ironically benefited from slowing it down, taking a pit stop to retool and emerge this month as a total crowd-pleaser.

What most vividly comes across in The Fight is the never-ending nature of freedom and democracy.

Sometimes Bowie, who refers to his public persona as “an intoxicating parallel to my perceived reality,” seems to be weighing himself like he would a piece of art. With an electric eye, “Moonage Daydream” finds the slipstream of that reality.

A potent and vividly acted drama about the FBI’s subversion and assassination of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Year of the Dragon is a first-rate cops vs. the mob melodrama which restores Michael Cimino's reputation as a gifted filmmaker. [2 Sept 1985]

Oliver and Company is the most fully realized animated film from the Disney Co. since 101 Dalmatians. It is inspired entertainment in all departments: characters, animation, comedy, plot and voices. [28 Nov 1988]

Just when you thought that sophistication had vanished from the silver screen, along comes Legal Eagles to gladden the heart and charge the intellect. [16 July 1986]

Rarely has a movie’s title been so apt as that of Waves, a film that makes you feel like you’ve been knocked flat over by a fierce current — only to be rescued by a gentle, soothing flow of warm surf that arrives in the nick of time.

Ridley Scott (“Alien”) has produced a new vision that is forbidding. [2 July 1982]

Till, an aching wail of a movie, is a story in many ways about the inevitable tragedy of American racism.

“Balance is key,” one character says of nature in the film. “Evil Does Not Exist,” though, is boldly uneven.

Ultimately, “Sundown” is more of a spiritual sister to “Melancholia” with shades of “Somewhere." It is a portrait of a body whose soul has long since departed.

Though I’ve been apprehensive about the flamboyant severity of Lanthimos’ movies, I found “Bugonia,” a chamber-piece gut punch, hard to shake.

Adapting Rosa Liksom’s novel of the same name, Kuosmanen has moved the book from the ’80s to the ’90s and lost some of the story’s political backdrop in favor of a more out-of-time love story.

Anime master Mamoru Hosoda makes movies that, even at their most elaborate, can reach such staggeringly emotional heights that they seem to break free of anything you’re prepared for in an animated movie — or in most kinds of movies, for that matter.

If Soto’s film is loose and gritty, its satire is remarkably precise. This is a farce of creative life where the only pure artistic intention is a joke.

If there’s a critique to be made about the film, it’s that the satire and caricatures are a bit heavy-handed, with most of the male characters being not-so-subtle misogynists. But that overkill is part of what makes it so much fun.

Apollo 11 might not tell you anything you don’t already know about the moon landing. But it will make you feel it, and see it, anew.

A first-class thriller that will strike a terrifying note with anyone who's ever met the roommate from hell. [12 Aug 1992]

Missing, building off the related film “Searching” from 2018, manages to make a film about small screens feel electric on a big one.

It’s a story brilliantly adapted and directed by Sam Esmail, showrunner of “Mr. Robot,” who has made Leave the World Behind into a homage of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with the image of a man trying to outrun a crashing plane and using the master’s discordant loud music.

It’s a testament to the actors and director that it remains riveting throughout.

It is simply terrific — an understated but smartly told crowd-pleaser about the legendary comedy duo in their last act, with wonderful production value, a sharp and surprisingly poignant script and brilliant performances from John C. Reilly, as Oliver Hardy, and Steve Coogan, as Stan Laurel.

There is a wonderful feeling in “Between the Temples” that anything can happen at any moment.

If there is a big studio movie that’s more generally crowd-pleasing than Green Book this season, I have yet to find it.

It contains three superlative performances and ranks among the best work by John Huston. [10 July 1984]

In the bleak, everyday struggles the Dardennes dramatize, they are always, thank god, keenly on the lookout for grace.

Zhao, co-writing with O’Farrell, goes straight for the tear ducts, with crucial help from a superb cast led by Buckley — who, like her character, seems to have an extraordinary ability to dispense with artifice and access a wildness simmering beneath the surface.

Director Peter Yates brings vitality to Steve Tesich's endearing script, avoiding any temptation for cheap shots. The cast is mostly unknown and awfully good, especially Dennis Christopher as a Hoosier turned Italian and Paul Dooley as his exasperated parent. [16 July 1979]

Much of The Favourite is caustically clever but it’s Colman who elevates it to something magnificent.

Gray does a wonderful job painting a portrait of a moment of cultural upheaval through these two boys, their opportunities, their support systems (or lack thereof) and how it was an origin of sorts for the rot that festers today.

It is charming, genuinely funny and a breeze to watch.

The interweaving of the characters is a masterpiece of invention. Husbands and Wives ranks with Allen's best, as mature but darker than "Hannah and Her Sisters." The laughs come not as readily, and snickers of recognition will be epidemic. But whatever happens in the courts, Allen remains the screen's best social commentator. [14 Sept 1992]